Idaho

Idaho bill that would require children to opt in to vaccine registry heads to House floor – Idaho Capital Sun

Published

2 years ago

February 5, 2024

Idaho legislators advanced a bill on Monday that would require parents to opt in to the state’s vaccine registry, rather than Idaho’s existing policy that lets them to opt their children out.

Legislators on Idaho’s House Health and Welfare Committee on Monday advanced a bill that would require medical providers to only share the vaccination status of Idaho kids in a state-run database if their parents or caregivers say so.

Currently, Idaho’s immunization database, called the Immunization Reminder Information System, lets patients not be part of the database by opting out. If passed, the bill would take effect July 1, 2024.

Some health care professionals said the switch could leave Idaho medical offices with millions more in administrative costs.

Idaho Rep. Megan Blanksma, R-Hammett (Courtesy of the Idaho Legislature)

Idaho’s children immunization rates, which have been among the lowest in the nation for years, fell in recent years as more people opted out of vaccines required for school, Idaho Education News reported last fall. Before the pandemic, 86.5% of Idaho kindergartners, first- and seventh-grade students were vaccinated. By 2021-22, only 80.2% were, Idaho EdNews reported.

House Majority Leader Megan Blanksma, R-Hammett, who is sponsoring House Bill 397, said she worried that Idahoans vaccination data — including for adults — is in Idaho’s vaccine database without them knowing. She referenced own experience finding out that her children’s and mother’s vaccine records were in the state database without their permission, after she opted out for her children. She also said Idaho’s vaccine database originally was “opt in” based.

As she closed debate on her bill, Blanksma said many Idahoans who received vaccines “don’t know that the government was collecting your data on that vaccine” because they weren’t given an informed consent form.

“That’s what should scare us more than anything else … that there’s data collection that people don’t know about, are completely unaware of. And that’s what this bill fixes,” Blanksma said. “It makes sure everyone knows where their medical data is going.”

Blanksma also said in the hearing that Idaho’s opt-out rate was low because it is difficult to opt out, and the bill would ensure that medical “providers don’t opt you in.”

“It’s become more complicated, and less transparent,” she said. “… Anytime the government is collecting your data, it should be transparent.”

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How would the opt-in changes affect medical providers?

The change should not require more state and federal funds, the bill’s fiscal note estimates. Blanksma also told the committee that she doesn’t expect increased costs for providers. She said under Idaho’s current opt-in model, “they are already providing the data to the government.”

But Rebecca Coyle, who said she was an expert on immunization registries, said if you assume that this would cost $10,000 to update each system, it’d cost over $10 million across the more than 1,000 clinics connected to Idaho’s vaccine registry. The medical system today is built for an “opt-out system,” she said, and adding consent files to those systems would be costly.

“It’s going to push a cost over $10 million in costs back to citizens of this state,” Coyle said, “for fewer than 1,000 people who have opted out since 2010.”

Many rural clinics would likely “fail to comply” with the bill because of the high costs of changing the reporting system, said Dr. Cristina Abuchaibe, a doctor in eastern Idaho who represented the Idaho chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“In order for every single potential patient to be given the choice, it will require extra staff and it will require fancier electronic medical record systems. To be perfectly honest with you, the rural areas don’t have the capacity to support,” Abuchaibe testified. “We’re barely surviving now with a lot of the physicians also doing a lot of the staff work and working as a team to be able to keep up.”

Idaho Family Policy Center Policy Associate Grace Howat, the only member of the public to testify in support of the bill Monday, said Idaho’s current opt-out practice “intrudes on the privacy of Idaho parents and intrudes on parental rights.”

“Parents are responsible for raising their children, not the state,” Howat testified.

Heather Gagliano, an Idaho mom and registered nurse, testified against the bill. She said she’s been fully informed of her rights to participate in Idaho’s vaccine registry for her two children over the years.

And as a public health professional who’s given thousands of vaccines, she said she’s seen the benefits of Idaho’s vaccine system’s ease of use for medical providers. But when kids immunization records are incomplete, or hand-written and often illegible, she has to delay care, Gagliano said.

Rep. Jordan Redman, R-Coeur d’Alene, made a motion that the committee send the bill to the House floor and recommend that it pass. Only the committee’s three Democrats opposed the vote, after a failed motion by House Minority Leader Ilana Rubel, D-Boise, to hold the bill in committee.

House Bill 397 now heads to the House floor, where lawmakers could debate it before sending it through to the Idaho Senate.

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What is the Immunization Reminder Information System, or IRIS?

Idaho’s IRIS system is similar to those used by other states. It helps health care providers remind people when they, or their children, are due for vaccines. Child care providers can access it to verify a child’s vaccine status. It also maintains a record so that, for example, a patient with a short memory doesn’t get a tetanus booster shot every year.

The records are stored securely and made accessible only to health care providers, child care providers and schools. Individual patients also can request their own records, or opt to have their records excluded from IRIS.

Idaho Republican leadership sent a letter to former Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden in 2021 accusing the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare of unlawfully using the state’s vaccine-record keeping system, calling for the agency to destroy its records on adult immunizations. An attorney for the Idaho Office of the Attorney General replied later that year that the department wasn’t unlawfully using the system and that lawmakers were wrong.

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Idaho

Idaho is in for a streak of clear skies next week

Published

1 hour ago

January 11, 2026

Press Room

Idaho is in for a streak of clear skies next week

After a round of showers came through this week, the Gem State is staying dry and clear for next week.

Temperatures finally started to feel winter-like as we take a tumble this weekend. Consistent 40’s the highs, and 20’s the lows.

Conditions on the valley floors are not expected to get past the mid 40’s. Showers appear to be nonexistent for the next 7 to 10 days.

We will also see some air stagnation in our area, meaning that as a high-pressure ridge moves in, not too much change is expected in the air. So, air quality may take a bit of a fall.

Not much more than cold and dry air is on the way for Idaho, but at least the sun will shine for most of the forecast.

Have a great weekend and stay warm!

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Idaho

Interstate 84 near Mountain Home back open after utility work

Published

13 hours ago

January 10, 2026

Press Room

Interstate 84 near Mountain Home back open after utility work

MOUNTAIN HOME, Idaho (KMVT/KSVT) — Interstate 84 near Mountain Home is back open after crews closed the freeway due to utility work.

Crews closed westbound and eastbound lanes on Saturday morning from milepost 90 to milepost 95 due to Idaho Power working on power lines in the area, according to the Elmore County Sheriff’s Office. All lanes are now back open in both directions.

The sheriff’s office and the Mountain Home Police Department apologized for the inconvenience, saying they were just informed of the closure on Saturday morning.

More information regarding road closures and traffic conditions can be found at the Idaho Transportation Department’s 511 map.

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Idaho

Idaho murder victims’ families file wrongful death lawsuit against Washington State University

Published

1 day ago

January 10, 2026

Press Room

Idaho murder victims’ families file wrongful death lawsuit against Washington State University

The families of the four University of Idaho students killed in a brutal 2022 stabbing attack have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Washington State University (WSU), alleging the school ignored repeated warning signs about Bryan Kohberger.

The civil complaint, filed Jan. 7 in Skagit County Superior Court, was brought by Steve Goncalves, father of Kaylee Goncalves; Karen Laramie, mother of Madison Mogen; Jeffrey Kernodle, father of Xana Kernodle; and Stacy Chapin, mother of Ethan Chapin.

The lawsuit accuses WSU of gross negligence, wrongful death and violations of federal education laws, including Title IX. The plaintiffs are seeking unspecified monetary damages.

Attorney Robert Clifford, senior partner at Clifford Law Offices, said that the decision to leave damages “unspecified” is a strategic norm in high-stakes litigation because it prevents the focus from shifting towards sensationalism and keeps the decision firmly in the hands of the jury.

“Ultimately, that’s to be determined and answered by the jury,” said Clifford, who is not involved in the lawsuit. “But you have some compelling facts and the liability is going to depend on the strength of what the school knew.”

Despite Kohberger’s guilty plea in the murders, Clifford explained the civil case remains strong because the families face a lower burden of proof – requiring only a preponderance of evidence to establish the university’s liability.

“The mere fact that he pled guilty might not even be admissible in the civil proceeding because he’s not the defendant, right? If he is a defendant in the civil proceeding, then his plea of guilty will be important. And indeed, this school might try to use that to say, ‘See, it wasn’t our fault. He admits that it was his fault.’ But the bar is different for someone in a criminal proceeding than it is in a civil proceeding.”

According to the lawsuit, WSU hired Kohberger as a teaching assistant in its criminal justice and criminology department and provided him with a salary, tuition benefits, health insurance and on-campus housing.

The victims’ families allege the university had extensive authority over Kohberger’s conduct but failed to act despite mounting concerns.

Here’s the latest coverage on Bryan Kohberger:

The complaint says WSU received at least 13 formal reports accusing Kohberger of threatening, stalking, harassing or predatory behavior toward female students and staff during the fall 2022 semester. The families argue university officials did not meaningfully investigate those complaints or remove Kohberger from campus before the murders – even though they had the authority to do so.

The lawsuit also alleges that the university failed to use its own threat-assessment systems designed to identify individuals who pose a risk of violence, even as concerns about Kohberger escalated. Instead, the families claim, the university continued to employ him, house him and give him access to students.

“The murders were foreseeable and preventable,” the complaint states, alleging WSU prioritized avoiding legal and reputational risk over student safety.

The lawsuit also alleges broad failures within the public university, including alleged dysfunction within campus police and compliance officers who are responsible for handling accusations of misconduct, including sexual harassment and stalking.

Kohberger pleaded guilty in July 2025 to four counts of first-degree murder and burglary. He was sentenced to four consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.

Prosecutors said Kohberger stabbed the four students in the early morning hours of Nov. 13, 2022, inside an off-campus rental home in Moscow, Idaho, just miles from the WSU campus in Pullman, Washington.

Kohberger was arrested in Pennsylvania in December 2022 following a multi-state investigation.

Authorities linked him to the crime through DNA evidence, surveillance video and cellphone data showing repeated late-night trips near the victims’ home.

WSU has not yet filed a response to the lawsuit. Fox News Digital has reached out to WSU for comment.

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